Form V Trip to Portsmouth Dockyard

Our trip to Portsmouth was brilliant! We started in our classroom that we would have for the day. The other class went into the Mary Rose Museum. That means we started in the Learning Centre.

At the Learning Centre we looked at a slide show. The lady that was teaching us was very clever. The slide show was super interesting. It was all about the life of the Mary Rose and what it did. The main subject was about the differences between the officers and the crew.

Then we had to label objects from a blue box. We were officers, so we had posh things like pewter plates that we had to label. If we got them all correct we could then dress up in officers’ clothes. My outfit was very big! Everyone in the class had got ready. We all had a big picture together.

Next we had been put down a stage and were now crew. We did exactly the same but everything was crew based.

We had a lovely lunch. Before you knew it we were in the museum. This was very interesting. There were objects on one side and the boat on the other. When you looked at an object and turned around it would be where it would have been on the ship. We saw lots of amazing things like huge ropes for the anchor, cooking pots for the cook, arrows and longbows, shoes, lanterns made from bone, and special tools used by the carpenter and surgeon. It was very dark inside the museum. We even got to try a long bow and lifting a cannon ball. We saw the skeleton of a dog who lived with the carpenter, and only four bones of a rat. We saw a weapon to cut your arm off and I pretended to do it – don’t worry, it wasn’t sharp!

The last thing we did was visit the HMS Victory – we had a walk around. We saw cannons, a huge metal stove, the captain’s cabin and lots of cannon balls (called guns). HMS Victory was a war ship – she fought in the Battle of Trafalgar. It was so cramped and dark on the gun decks, and even worse when we got down to the bottom. We were shown how a gun was fired and all the different types of shot that they used. It would have been so noisy and smelly on board.

We had a great day out and learned a HUGE amount about living on a ship in the old days.